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Technology Stocks : The New QLogic (ANCR)
QLGC 16.070.0%Aug 24 5:00 PM EST
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To: WhoLovesYa who wrote (19847)12/24/1998 12:37:00 PM
From: KJ. Moy  Read Replies (1) of 29386
 
Greg,

<<<This may be an extremely stupid question since I have been following this board for almost 2 years but here
goes...What is the difference between a router and a switch?>>>

This is a loaded question, certainly not a stupid one. I'm not sure if anyone has answered your question. I'll give you a reader's digest's version. Router has to interpret routes that were either pre-defined(static routes) or via routes that were broadcasted to it. I'm not going to go into firewalls, different autonamous networks and things like that. Packets that went through a router had to come with origin and destination IP addresses. And, a router only knows(via its own route table) its next hop. It is up to the next router to find the next hop and so on until the final destination is reached. Packets came in from one interface of a router is considered one network and out another interface is considered another network. i.e. packets usually travelled through 'many networks'.
Switch on the other hand, depends more on hardware as well as software to interpret the pathing information. There is almost(I used the word almost because there are exceptions) a fixed displacement where the origin and destination(not IP addresses) are defined and picked up by the switch(level 2 I believe) and very little processing time is needed. Thus, switch, in general, is much faster. And, it is usually a single network unless routers(or routers' function) are also used. Hope this helps.

KJ
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